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Rocket Report: Bezos’ firm will package satellites for launch; Starship on deck

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The long, winding road for Franklin Chang-Diaz’s plasma rocket engine takes another turn.

Blue Origin’s second New Glenn booster left its factory this week for a road trip to the company’s launch pad a few miles away. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 8.14 of the Rocket Report! We’re now more than a week into a federal government shutdown, but there’s been little effect on the space industry. Military space operations are continuing unabated, and NASA continues preparations at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, for the launch of the Artemis II mission around the Moon early next year. The International Space Station is still flying with a crew of seven in low-Earth orbit, and NASA’s fleet of spacecraft exploring the cosmos remain active. What’s more, so much of what the nation does in space is now done by commercial companies largely (but not completely) immune from the pitfalls of politics. But the effect of the shutdown on troops and federal employees shouldn’t be overlooked. They will soon miss their first paychecks unless political leaders reach an agreement to end the stalemate.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Danger from dead rockets. A new listing of the 50 most concerning pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, primarily dead rockets left to hurtle through space at the end of their missions, Ars reports. “The things left before 2000 are still the majority of the problem,” said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented October 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. “Seventy-six percent of the objects in the top 50 were deposited last century, and 88 percent of the objects are rocket bodies. That’s important to note, especially with some disturbing trends right now.”

Littering in LEO … The disturbing trends mainly revolve around China’s actions in low-Earth orbit. “The bad news is, since January 1, 2024, we’ve had 26 rocket bodies abandoned in low-Earth orbit that will stay in orbit for more than 25 years,” McKnight told Ars. China is responsible for leaving behind 21 of those 26 rockets. Overall, Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight’s Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia’s SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the Top 50 slots. An impact with even a modestly sized object at orbital velocity would create countless pieces of debris, potentially triggering a cascading series of additional collisions clogging LEO with more and more space junk, a scenario called the Kessler Syndrome.

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New Shepard flies again. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, launched its sixth crewed New Shepard flight so far this year Wednesday as the company works to increase the vehicle’s flight rate, Space News reports. This was the 36th flight of Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket. The passengers included: Jeff Elgin, Danna Karagussova, Clint Kelly III, Will Lewis, Aaron Newman, and Vitalii Ostrovsky. Blue Origin said it has now flown 86 humans (80 individuals) into space. The New Shepard booster returned to a pinpoint propulsive landing, and the capsule parachuted into the desert a few miles from the launch site near Van Horn, Texas.

Two-month turnaround … This flight continued Blue Origin’s trend of launching New Shepard about once per month. The company has two capsules and two boosters in its active inventory, and each vehicle has flown about once every two months this year. Blue Origin currently has command of the space tourism and suborbital research market as its main competitor in this sector, Virgin Galactic, remains grounded while it builds a next-generation rocket plane. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

NASA still interested in former astronaut’s rocket engine. NASA has awarded the Ad Astra Rocket Company a $4 million, two-year contract for the continued development of the company’s Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) concept, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Ad Astra, founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, claims the vehicle has the potential to reach Mars with human explorers within 45 days using a nuclear power source rather than solar power. The new contract will enable federal funding to support development of the engine’s radio frequency, superconducting magnet, and structural exoskeleton subsystems.

Slow going … Houston-based Ad Astra said in a press release that it sees the high-power plasma engine as “nearing flight readiness.” We’ve heard this before. The VASIMR engine has been in development for decades now, beset by a lack of stable funding and the technical hurdles inherent in designing and testing such demanding technology. For example, Ad Astra once planned a critical 100-hour, 100-kilowatt ground test of the VASIMR engine in 2018. The test still hasn’t happened. Engineers discovered a core component of the engine tended to overheat as power levels approached 100 kilowatts, forcing a redesign that set the program back by at least several years. Now, Ad Astra says it is ready to build and test a pair of 150-kilowatt engines, one of which is intended to fly in space at the end of the decade.

Gilmour eyes return to flight next year. Australian rocket and satellite startup Gilmour Space Technologies is looking to return to the launch pad next year after the first attempt at an orbital flight failed over the summer, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. “We are well capitalized. We are going to be launching again next year,” Adam Gilmour, the company’s CEO, said October 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney.

What happened? … Gilmour didn’t provide many details about the cause of the launch failure in July, other than to say it appeared to be something the company didn’t test for ahead of the flight. The Eris rocket flew for 14 seconds, losing control and crashing a short distance from the launch pad in the Australian state of Queensland. If there’s any silver lining, Gilmour said the failure didn’t damage the launch pad, and the rocket’s use of a novel hybrid propulsion system limited the destructive power of the blast when it struck the ground.

Stoke Space’s impressive funding haul. Stoke Space announced a significant capital raise on Wednesday, a total of $510 million as part of Series D funding. The new financing doubles the total capital raised by Stoke Space, founded in 2020, to $990 million, Ars reports. The infusion of money will provide the company with “the runway to complete development” of the Nova rocket and demonstrate its capability through its first flights, said Andy Lapsa, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, in a news release characterizing the new funding.

A futuristic design … Stoke is working toward a 2026 launch of the medium-lift Nova rocket. The rocket’s innovative design is intended to be fully reusable from the payload fairing on down, with a regeneratively cooled heat shield on the vehicle’s second stage. In fully reusable mode, Nova will have a payload capacity of 3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, and up to 7 tons in fully expendable mode. Stoke is building a launch pad for the Nova rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

SpaceX took an unusual break from launching. SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket from Florida in 12 days during the predawn hours of Tuesday morning, Spaceflight Now reports. The launch gap was highlighted by a run of persistent, daily storms in Central Florida and over the Atlantic Ocean, including hurricanes that prevented deployment of SpaceX’s drone ships to support booster landings. The break ended with the launch of 28 more Starlink broadband satellites. SpaceX launched three Starlink missions in the interim from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Weather still an issue … Weather conditions on Florida’s Space Coast are often volatile, particularly in the evenings during summer and early autumn. SpaceX’s next launch from Florida was supposed to take off Thursday evening, but officials pushed it back to no earlier than Saturday due to a poor weather forecast over the next two days. Weather still gets a vote in determining whether a rocket lifts off or doesn’t, despite SpaceX’s advancements in launch efficiency and the Space Force’s improved weather monitoring capabilities at Cape Canaveral.

ArianeGroup chief departs for train maker. Current ArianeGroup CEO Martin Sion has been named the new head of French train maker Alstom. He will officially take up the role in April 2026, European Spaceflight reports. Sion assumed the role as ArianeGroup’s chief executive in 2023, replacing the former CEO who left the company after delays in the debut of its main product: the Ariane 6 rocket. Sion’s appointment was announced by Alstom, but ArianeGroup has not made any official statement on the matter.

Under pressure … The change in ArianeGroup’s leadership comes as the company ramps up production and increases the launch cadence of the Ariane 6 rocket, which has now flown three times, with a fourth launch due next month. ArianeGroup’s subsidiary, Arianespace, seeks to increase the Ariane 6’s launch cadence to 10 missions per year by 2029. ArianeGroup and its suppliers will need to drastically improve factory throughput to reach this goal.

New Glenn emerges from factory. Blue Origin rolled the first stage of its massive New Glenn rocket from its hangar on Wednesday morning in Florida, kicking off the final phase of the campaign to launch the heavy-lift vehicle for the second time, Ars reports. In sharing video of the rollout to Launch Complex-36 on Wednesday online, the space company did not provide a launch target for the mission, which seeks to put two small Mars-bound payloads into orbit. The pair of identical spacecraft to study the solar wind at Mars is known as ESCAPADE. However, sources told Ars that on the current timeline, Blue Origin is targeting a launch window of November 9 to November 11. This assumes pre-launch activities, including a static-fire test of the first stage, go well.

Recovery or bust? … Blue Origin has a lot riding on this booster, named “Never Tell Me The Odds,” which it will seek to recover and reuse. Despite the name of the booster, the company is quietly confident that it will successfully land the first stage on a drone ship named Jacklyn. Internally, engineers at Blue Origin believe there is about a 75 percent chance of success. The first booster malfunctioned before landing on the inaugural New Glenn test flight in January. Company officials are betting big on recovering the booster this time, with plans to reuse it early next year to launch Blue’s first lunar lander to the Moon.

SpaceX gets bulk of this year’s military launch orders. Around this time each year, the US Space Force convenes a Mission Assignment Board to dole out contracts to launch the nation’s most critical national security satellites. The military announced this year’s launch orders Friday, and SpaceX was the big winner, Ars reports. Space Systems Command, the unit responsible for awarding military launch contracts, selected SpaceX to launch five of the seven missions up for assignment this year. United Launch Alliance (ULA), a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, won contracts for the other two. These missions for the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office are still at least a couple of years away from flying.

Vulcan getting more expensive … A closer examination of this year’s National Security Space Launch contracts reveals some interesting things. The Space Force is paying SpaceX $714 million for the five launches awarded Friday, for an average of roughly $143 million per mission. ULA will receive $428 million for two missions, or $214 million for each launch. That’s about 50 percent more expensive than SpaceX’s price per mission. This is in line with the prices the Space Force paid SpaceX and ULA for last year’s contracts. However, look back a little further and you’ll find ULA’s prices for military launches have, for some reason, increased significantly over the last few years. In late 2023, the Space Force awarded a $1.3 billion deal to ULA for a batch of 11 launches at an average cost per mission of $119 million. A few months earlier, Space Systems Command assigned six launches to ULA for $672 million, or $112 million per mission.

Starship Flight 11 nears launch. SpaceX rolled the Super Heavy booster for the next test flight of the company’s Starship mega-rocket out to the launch pad in Texas this week. The booster stage, with 33 methane-fueled engines, will power the Starship into the upper atmosphere during the first few minutes of flight. This booster is flight-proven, having previously launched and landed on a test flight in March.

Next steps … With the Super Heavy booster installed on the pad, the next step for SpaceX will be the rollout of the Starship upper stage. That is expected to happen in the coming days. Ground crews will raise Starship atop the Super Heavy booster to fully stack the rocket to its total height of more than 400 feet (120 meters). If everything goes well, SpaceX is targeting liftoff of the 11th full-scale test flight of Starship and Super Heavy as soon as Monday evening. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin takes on a new line of business. Blue Origin won a US Space Force competition to build a new payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, Spaceflight Now reports. Under the terms of the $78.2 million contract, Blue Origin will build a new facility capable of handling payloads for up to 16 missions per year. The Space Force expects to use about half of that capacity, with the rest available to NASA or Blue Origin’s commercial customers. This contract award follows a $77.5 million agreement the Space Force signed with Astrotech earlier this year to expand the footprint of its payload processing facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Important stuff … Ground infrastructure often doesn’t get the same level of attention as rockets, but the Space Force has identified bottlenecks in payload processing as potential constraints on ramping up launch cadences at the government’s spaceports in Florida and California. Currently, there are only a handful of payload processing facilities in the Cape Canaveral area, and most of them are only open to a single user, such as SpaceX, Amazon, the National Reconnaissance Office, or NASA. So, what exactly is payload processing? The Space Force said Blue Origin’s new facility will include space for “several pre-launch preparatory activities” that include charging batteries, fueling satellites, loading other gaseous and fluid commodities, and encapsulation. To accomplish those tasks, Blue Origin will create “a clean, secure, specialized high-bay facility capable of handling flight hardware, toxic fuels, and explosive materials.”

Next three launches

Oct. 11: Gravity 1 | Unknown Payload | Haiyang Spaceport, China Coastal Waters | 02: 15 UTC

Oct. 12: Falcon 9 | Project Kuiper KF-03 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 00: 41 UTC

Oct. 13: Starship/Super Heavy | Flight 11 | Starbase, Texas | 23: 15 UTC

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Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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We’re about to find many more interstellar interlopers—here’s how to visit one

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“You don’t have to claim that they’re aliens to make these exciting.”

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Credit: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Credit: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

A few days ago, an inscrutable interstellar interloper made its closest approach to Mars, where a fleet of international spacecraft seek to unravel the red planet’s ancient mysteries.

Several of the probes encircling Mars took a break from their usual activities and turned their cameras toward space to catch a glimpse of an object named 3I/ATLAS, a rogue comet that arrived in our Solar System from interstellar space and is now barreling toward perihelion—its closest approach to the Sun—at the end of this month.

This is the third interstellar object astronomers have detected within our Solar System, following 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov discovered in 2017 and 2019. Scientists think interstellar objects routinely transit among the planets, but telescopes have only recently had the ability to find one. For example, the telescope that discovered Oumuamua only came online in 2010.

Detectable but still unreachable

Astronomers first reported observations of 3I/ATLAS on July 1, just four months before reaching its deepest penetration into the Solar System. Unfortunately for astronomers, the particulars of this object’s trajectory will bring it to perihelion when the Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun. The nearest 3I/ATLAS will come to Earth is about 170 million miles (270 million kilometers) in December, eliminating any chance for high-resolution imaging. The viewing geometry also means the Sun’s glare will block all direct views of the comet from Earth until next month.

The James Webb Space Telescope observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on August 6 with its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument. Credit: NASA/James Webb Space Telescope

Because of that, the closest any active spacecraft will get to 3I/ATLAS happened Friday, when it passed less than 20 million miles (30 million kilometers) from Mars. NASA’s Perseverance rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter were expected to make observations of 3I/ATLAS, along with Europe’s Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter missions.

The best views of the object so far have been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, positioned much closer to Earth. Those observations helped astronomers narrow down the object’s size, but the estimates remain imprecise. Based on Hubble’s images, the icy core of 3I/ATLAS is somewhere between the size of the Empire State Building to something a little larger than Central Park.

That may be the most we’ll ever know about the dimensions of 3I/ATLAS. The spacecraft at Mars lack the exquisite imaging sensitivity of Webb and Hubble, so don’t expect spectacular views from Friday’s observations. But scientists hope to get a better handle on the cloud of gas and dust surrounding the object, giving it the appearance of a comet. Spectroscopic observations have shown the coma around 3I/ATLAS contains water vapor and an unusually strong signature of carbon dioxide extending out nearly a half-million miles.

On Tuesday, the European Space Agency released the first grainy images of 3I/ATLAS captured at Mars. The best views will come from a small telescope called HiRISE on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The images from NASA won’t be released until after the end of the ongoing federal government shutdown, according to a member of the HiRISE team.

Europe’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter turned its eyes toward interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passed close to Mars on Friday, October 3. The comet’s coma is visible as a fuzzy blob surrounding its nucleus, which was not resolved by the spacecraft’s camera. Credit: ESA/TGO/CaSSIS

Studies of 3I/ATLAS suggest it was probably kicked out of another star system, perhaps by an encounter with a giant planet. Comets in our Solar System sometimes get ejected into the Milky Way galaxy when they come too close to Jupiter. It roamed the galaxy for billions of years before arriving in the Sun’s galactic neighborhood.

The rogue comet is now gaining speed as gravity pulls it toward perihelion, when it will max out at a relative velocity of 152,000 mph (68 kilometers per second), much too fast to be bound into a closed orbit around the Sun. Instead, the comet will catapult back into the galaxy, never to be seen again.

We need to talk about aliens

Anyone who studies planetary formation would relish the opportunity to get a close-up look at an interstellar object. Sending a mission to one would undoubtedly yield a scientific payoff. There’s a good chance that many of these interlopers have been around longer than our own 4.5 billion-year-old Solar System.

One study from the University of Oxford suggests that 3I/ATLAS came from the “thick disk” of the Milky Way, which is home to a dense population of ancient stars. This origin story would mean the comet is probably more than 7 billion years old, holding clues about cosmic history that are simply inaccessible among the planets, comets, and asteroids that formed with the birth of the Sun.

This is enough reason to mount a mission to explore one of these objects, scientists said. It doesn’t need justification from unfounded theories that 3I/ATLAS might be an artifact of alien technology, as proposed by Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb. The scientific consensus is that the object is of natural origin.

Loeb shared a similar theory about the first interstellar object found wandering through our Solar System. His statements have sparked questions in popular media about why the world’s space agencies don’t send a probe to actually visit one. Loeb himself proposed redirecting NASA’s Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter on a mission to fly by 3I/ATLAS, and his writings prompted at least one member of Congress to write a letter to NASA to “rejuvenate” the Juno mission by breaking out of Jupiter’s orbit and taking aim at 3I/ATLAS for a close-up inspection.

The problem is that Juno simply doesn’t have enough fuel to reach the comet, and its main engine is broken. In fact, the total boost required to send Juno from Jupiter to 3I/ATLAS (roughly 5,800 mph or 2.6 kilometers per second) would surpass the fuel capacity of most interplanetary probes.

Ars asked Scott Bolton, lead scientist on the Juno mission, and he confirmed that the spacecraft lacks the oomph required for the kind of maneuvers proposed by Loeb. “We had no role in that paper,” Bolton told Ars. “He assumed propellant that we don’t really have.”

Avi Loeb, a Harvard University astrophysicist. Credit: Anibal Martel/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

So Loeb’s exercise was moot, but his talk of aliens has garnered public attention. Loeb appeared on the conservative network Newsmax last week to discuss his theory of 3I/ATLAS alongside Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.). Predictably, conspiracy theories abounded. But as of Tuesday, the segment has 1.2 million views on YouTube. Maybe it’s a good thing that people who approve government budgets, especially those without a preexisting interest in NASA, are eager to learn more about the Universe. We will leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions on that matter.

Loeb’s calculations also help illustrate the difficulty of pulling off a mission to an interstellar object. So far, we’ve only known about an incoming interstellar intruder a few months before it comes closest to Earth. That’s not to mention the enormous speeds at which these objects move through the Solar System. It’s just not feasible to build a spacecraft and launch it on such short notice.

Now, some scientists are working on ways to overcome these limitations.

So you’re saying there’s a chance?

One of these people is Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer and planetary scientist at the University of Edinburgh. A few years ago, he helped propose to the European Space Agency a mission concept that would have very likely been laughed out of the room a generation ago. Snodgrass and his team wanted a commitment from ESA of up to $175 million (150 million euros) to launch a mission with no idea of where it would go.

ESA officials called Snodgrass in 2019 to say the agency would fund his mission, named Comet Interceptor, for launch in the late 2020s. The goal of the mission is to perform the first detailed observations of a long-period comet. So far, spacecraft have only visited short-period comets that routinely dip into the inner part of the Solar System.

A long-period comet is an icy visitor from the farthest reaches of the Solar System that has spent little time getting blasted by the Sun’s heat and radiation, freezing its physical and chemical properties much as they were billions of years ago.

Long-period comets are typically discovered a year or two before coming near the Sun, still not enough time to develop a mission from scratch. With Comet Interceptor, ESA will launch a probe to loiter in space a million miles from Earth, wait for the right comet to come along, then fire its engines to pursue it.

Odds are good that the right comet will come from within the Solar System. “That is the point of the mission,” Snodgrass told Ars.

ESA’s Comet Interceptor will be the first mission to visit a comet coming directly from the outer reaches of the Sun’s realm, carrying material untouched since the dawn of the Solar System. Credit: European Space Agency

But if astronomers detect an interstellar object coming toward us on the right trajectory, there’s a chance Comet Interceptor could reach it.

“I think that the entire science team would agree, if we get really lucky and there’s an interstellar object that we could reach, then to hell with the normal plan, let’s go and do this,” Snodgrass said. “It’s an opportunity you couldn’t just leave sitting there.”

But, he added, it’s “very unlikely” that an interstellar object will be in the right place at the right time. “Although everyone’s always very excited about the possibility, and we’re excited about the possibility, we kind of try and keep the expectations to a realistic level.”

For example, if Comet Interceptor were in space today, there’s no way it could reach 3I/ATLAS. “It’s an unfortunate one,” Snodgrass said. “Its closest point to the Sun, it reaches that on the other side of the Sun from where the Earth is. Just bad timing.” If an interceptor were parked somewhere else in the Solar System, it might be able to get itself in position for an encounter with 3I/ATLAS. “There’s only so much fuel aboard,” Snodgrass said. “There’s only so fast we can go.”

It’s even harder to send a spacecraft to encounter an interstellar object than it is to visit one of the Solar System’s homegrown long-period comets. The calculation of whether Comet Interceptor could reach one of these galactic visitors boils down to where it’s heading and when astronomers discover it.

Snodgrass is part of a team using big telescopes to observe 3I/ATLAS from a distance. “As it’s getting closer to the Sun, it is getting brighter,” he said in an interview.

“You don’t have to claim that they’re aliens to make these exciting,” Snodgrass said. “They’re interesting because they are a bit of another solar system that you can actually feasibly get an up-close view of, even the sort of telescopic views we’re getting now.”

Colin Snodgrass, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, leads the Comet Interceptor science team. Credit: University of Edinburgh

Comets and asteroids are the linchpins for understanding the formation of the Solar System. These modest worlds are the leftover building blocks from the debris that coalesced into the planets. Today, direct observations have only allowed scientists to study the history of one planetary system. An interstellar comet would grow the sample size to two.

Still, Snodgrass said his team prefers to keep their energy focused on reaching a comet originating from the frontier of our own Solar System. “We’re not going to let a very lovely Solar System comet go by, waiting to see ‘what if there’s an interstellar thing?'” he said.

Snodgrass sees Comet Interceptor as a proof of concept for scientists to propose a future mission specially designed to travel to an interstellar object. “You need to figure out how do you build the souped-up version that could really get to an interstellar object? I think that’s five or 10 years away, but [it’s] entirely realistic.”

An American answer

Scientists in the United States are working on just such a proposal. A team from the Southwest Research Institute completed a concept study showing how a mission could fly by one of these interstellar visitors. What’s more, the US scientists say their proposed mission could have actually reached 3I/ATLAS had it already been in space.

The American concept is similar to Europe’s Comet Interceptor in that it will park a spacecraft somewhere in deep space and wait for the right target to come along. The study was led by Alan Stern, the chief scientist on NASA’s New Horizons mission that flew by Pluto a decade ago. “These new kinds of objects offer humankind the first feasible opportunity to closely explore bodies formed in other star systems,” he said.

An animation of the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS through the inner Solar System. Credit: NASA/JPL

It’s impossible with current technology to send a spacecraft to match orbits and rendezvous with a high-speed interstellar comet. “We don’t have to catch it,” Stern recently told Ars. “We just have to cross its orbit. So it does carry a fair amount of fuel in order to get out of Earth’s orbit and onto the comet’s path to cross that path.”

Stern said his team developed a cost estimate for such a mission, and while he didn’t disclose the exact number, he said it would fall under NASA’s cost cap for a Discovery-class mission. The Discovery program is a line of planetary science missions that NASA selects through periodic competitions within the science community. The cost cap for NASA’s next Discovery competition is expected to be $800 million, not including the launch vehicle.

A mission to encounter an interstellar comet requires no new technologies, Stern said. Hopes for such a mission are bolstered by the activation of the US-funded Vera Rubin Observatory, a state-of-the-art facility high in the mountains of Chile set to begin deep surveys of the entire southern sky later this year. Stern predicts Rubin will discover “one or two” interstellar objects per year. The new observatory should be able to detect the faint light from incoming interstellar bodies sooner, providing missions with more advance warning.

“If we put a spacecraft like this in space for a few years, while it’s waiting, there should be five or 10 to choose from,” he said.

Alan Stern speaks onstage during Day 1 of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 in San Francisco. Credit: Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch

Winning NASA funding for a mission like Stern’s concept will not be easy. It must compete with dozens of other proposals, and NASA’s next Discovery competition is probably at least two or three years away. The timing of the competition is more uncertain than usual due to swirling questions about NASA’s budget after the Trump administration announced it wants to cut the agency’s science funding in half.

Comet Interceptor, on the other hand, is already funded in Europe. ESA has become a pioneer in comet exploration. The Giotto probe flew by Halley’s Comet in 1986, becoming the first spacecraft to make close-up observations of a comet. ESA’s Rosetta mission became the first spacecraft to orbit a comet in 2014, and later that year, it deployed a German-built lander to return the first data from the surface of a comet. Both of those missions explored short-period comets.

“Each time that ESA has done a comet mission, it’s done something very ambitious and very new,” Snodgrass said. “The Giotto mission was the first time ESA really tried to do anything interplanetary… And then, Rosetta, putting this thing in orbit and landing on a comet was a crazy difficult thing to attempt to do.”

“They really do push the envelope a bit, which is good because ESA can be quite risk averse, I think it’s fair to say, with what they do with missions,” he said. “But the comet missions, they are things where they’ve really gone for that next step, and Comet Interceptor is the same. The whole idea of trying to design a space mission before you know where you’re going is a slightly crazy way of doing things. But it’s the only way to do this mission. And it’s great that we’re trying it.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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How America fell behind China in the lunar space race—and how it can catch back up

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Thanks to some recent reporting, we’ve found a potential solution to the Artemis blues.

A man in a suit speaks in front of a mural of the Moon landing.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says that competition is good for the Artemis Moon program. Credit: NASA

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says that competition is good for the Artemis Moon program. Credit: NASA

For the last month, NASA’s interim administrator, Sean Duffy, has been giving interviews and speeches around the world, offering a singular message: “We are going to beat the Chinese to the Moon.”

This is certainly what the president who appointed Duffy to the NASA post wants to hear. Unfortunately, there is a very good chance that Duffy’s sentiment is false. Privately, many people within the space industry, and even at NASA, acknowledge that the US space agency appears to be holding a losing hand. Recently, some influential voices, such as former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, have spoken out.

“Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline to the Moon’s surface,” Bridenstine said in early September.

As the debate about NASA potentially losing the “second” space race to China heats up in Washington, DC, everyone is pointing fingers. But no one is really offering answers for how to beat China’s ambitions to land taikonauts on the Moon as early as the year 2029. So I will. The purpose of this article is to articulate how NASA ended up falling behind China, and more importantly, how the Western world could realistically retake the lead.

But first, space policymakers must learn from their mistakes.

Begin at the beginning

Thousands of words could be written about the space policy created in the United States over the last two decades and all of the missteps. However, this article will only hit the highlights (lowlights). And the story begins in 2003, when two watershed events occurred.

The first of these was the loss of space shuttle Columbia in February, the second fatal shuttle accident, which signaled that the shuttle era was nearing its end, and it began a period of soul-searching at NASA and in Washington, DC, about what the space agency should do next.

“There’s a crucial year after the Columbia accident,” said eminent NASA historian John Logsdon. “President George W. Bush said we should go back to the Moon. And the result of the assessment after Columbia is NASA should get back to doing great things.” For NASA, this meant creating a new deep space exploration program for astronauts, be it the Moon, Mars, or both.

The other key milestone in 2003 came in October, when Yang Liwei flew into space and China became the third country capable of human spaceflight. After his 21-hour spaceflight, Chinese leaders began to more deeply appreciate the soft power that came with spaceflight and started to commit more resources to related programs. Long-term, the Asian nation sought to catch up to the United States in terms of spaceflight capabilities and eventually surpass the superpower.

It was not much of a competition then. China would not take its first tentative steps into deep space for another four years, with the Chang’e 1 lunar orbiter. NASA had already walked on the Moon and sent spacecraft across the Solar System and even beyond.

So how did the United States squander such a massive lead?

Mistakes were made

SpaceX and its complex Starship lander are getting the lion’s share of the blame today for delays to NASA’s Artemis Program. But the company and its lunar lander version of Starship are just the final steps on a long, winding path that got the United States where it is today.

After Columbia, the Bush White House, with its NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, looked at a variety of options (see, for example, the Exploration Systems Architecture Study in 2005). But Griffin had a clear plan in his mind that he dubbed “Apollo on Steroids,” and he sought to develop a large rocket (Ares V), spacecraft (later to be named Orion), and a lunar lander to accomplish a lunar landing by 2020. Collectively, this became known as the Constellation Program.

It was a mess. Congress did not provide NASA the funding it needed, and the rocket and spacecraft programs quickly ran behind schedule. At one point, to pay for surging Constellation costs, NASA absurdly mulled canceling the just-completed International Space Station. By the end of the first decade of the 2000s, two things were clear: NASA was going nowhere fast, and the program’s only achievement was to enrich the legacy space contractors.

By early 2010, after spending a year assessing the state of play, the Obama administration sought to cancel Constellation. It ran into serious congressional pushback, powered by lobbying from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and other key legacy contractors.

The Space Launch System was created as part of a political compromise between Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and senators from Alabama and Texas.

Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Space Launch System was created as part of a political compromise between Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and senators from Alabama and Texas. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Obama White House wanted to cancel both the rocket and the spacecraft and hold a competition for the private sector to develop a heavy lift vehicle. Their thinking: Only with lower-cost access to space could the nation afford to have a sustainable deep space exploration plan. In retrospect, it was the smart idea, but Congress was not having it. In 2011, Congress saved Orion and ordered a slightly modified rocket—it would still be based on space shuttle architecture to protect key contractors—that became the Space Launch System.

Then the Obama administration, with its NASA leader Charles Bolden, cast about for something to do with this hardware. They started talking about a “Journey to Mars.” But it was all nonsense. There was never any there there. Essentially, NASA lost a decade, spending billions of dollars a year developing “exploration” systems for humans and talking about fanciful missions to the red planet.

There were critics of this approach, myself included. In 2014, I authored a seven-part series at the Houston Chronicle called Adrift, the title referring to the direction of NASA’s deep space ambitions. The fundamental problem is that NASA, at the direction of Congress, was spending all of its exploration funds developing Orion, the SLS rocket, and ground systems for some future mission. This made the big contractors happy, but their cost-plus contracts gobbled up so much funding that NASA had no money to spend on payloads or things to actually fly on this hardware.

This is why doubters called the SLS the “rocket to nowhere.” They were, sadly, correct.

The Moon, finally

Fairly early on in the first Trump administration, the new leader of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, managed to ditch the Journey to Mars and establish a lunar program. However, any efforts to consider alternatives to the SLS rocket were quickly rebuffed by the US Senate.

During his tenure, Bridenstine established the Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon. But Congress was slow to open its purse for elements of the program that would not clearly benefit a traditional contractor or NASA field center. Consequently, the space agency did not select a lunar lander until April 2021, after Bridenstine had left office. And NASA did not begin funding work on this until late 2021 due to a protest by Blue Origin. The space agency did not support a lunar spacesuit program for another year.

Much has been made about the selection of SpaceX as the sole provider of a lunar lander. Was it shady? Was the decision rushed before Bill Nelson was confirmed as NASA administrator? In truth, SpaceX was the only company that bid a value that NASA could afford with its paltry budget for a lunar lander (again, Congress prioritized SLS funding), and which had the capability the agency required.

To be clear, for a decade, NASA spent in excess of $3 billion a year on the development of the SLS rocket and its ground systems. That’s every year for a rocket that used main engines from the space shuttle, a similar version of its solid rocket boosters, and had a core stage the same diameter as the shuttle’s external tank. Thirty billion bucks for a rocket highly derivative of a vehicle NASA flew for three decades. SpaceX was awarded less than a single year of this funding, $2.9 billion, for the entire development of a Human Landing System version of Starship, plus two missions.

So yes, after 20 years, Orion appears to be ready to carry NASA astronauts out to the Moon. After 15 years, the shuttle-derived rocket appears to work. And after four years (and less than a tenth of the funding), Starship is not ready to land humans on the Moon.

When will Starship be ready?

Probably not any time soon.

For SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk, the Artemis Program is a sidequest to the company’s real mission of sending humans to Mars. It simply is not a priority (and frankly, the limited funding from NASA does not compel prioritization). Due to its incredible ambition, the Starship program has also understandably hit some technical snags.

Unfortunately for NASA and the country, Starship still has a long way to go to land humans on the Moon. It must begin flying frequently (this could happen next year, finally). It must demonstrate the capability to transfer and store large amounts of cryogenic propellant in space. It must land on the Moon, a real challenge for such a tall vehicle, necessitating a flat surface that is difficult to find near the poles. And then it must demonstrate the ability to launch from the Moon, which would be unprecedented for cryogenic propellants.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle is the complexity of the mission. To fully fuel a Starship in low-Earth orbit to land on the Moon and take off would require multiple Starship “tanker” launches from Earth. No one can quite say how many because SpaceX is still working to increase the payload capacity of Starship, and no one has real-world data on transfer efficiency and propellant boiloff. But the number is probably at least a dozen missions. One senior source recently suggested to Ars that it may be as many as 20 to 40 launches.

The bottom line: It’s a lot. SpaceX is far and away the highest-performing space company in the Solar System. But putting all of the pieces together for a lunar landing will require time. Privately, SpaceX officials are telling NASA it can meet a 2028 timeline for Starship readiness for Artemis astronauts.

But that seems very optimistic. Very. It’s not something I would feel comfortable betting on, especially if China plans to land on the Moon “before” 2030, and the country continues to make credible progress toward this date.

What are the alternatives?

Duffy’s continued public insistence that he will not let China beat the United States back to the Moon rings hollow. The shrewd people in the industry I’ve spoken with say Duffy is an intelligent person and is starting to realize that betting the entire farm on SpaceX at this point would be a mistake. It would be nice to have a plan B.

But please, stop gaslighting us. Stop blustering about how we’re going to beat China while losing a quarter of NASA’s workforce and watching your key contractors struggle with growing pains. Let’s have an honest discussion about the challenges and how we’ll solve them.

What few people have done is offer solutions to Duffy’s conundrum. Fortunately, we’re here to help. As I have conducted interviews in recent weeks, I have always closed by asking this question: “You’re named NASA administrator tomorrow. You have one job: get NASA astronauts safely back to the Moon before China. What do you do?”

I’ve received a number of responses, which I’ll boil down into the following buckets. None of these strike me as particularly practical solutions, which underscores the desperation of NASA’s predicament. However, recent reporting has uncovered one solution that probably would work. I’ll address that last. First, the other ideas:

  • Stubby Starship: Multiple people have suggested this option. Tim Dodd has even spoken about it publicly. Two of the biggest issues with Starship are the need for many refuelings and its height, making it difficult to land on uneven terrain. NASA does not need Starship’s incredible capability to land 100–200 metric tons on the lunar surface. It needs fewer than 10 tons for initial human missions. So shorten Starship, reduce its capability, and get it down to a handful of refuelings. It’s not clear how feasible this would be beyond armchair engineering. But the larger problem is that Musk wants Starship to get taller, not shorter, so SpaceX would probably not be willing to do this.
  • Surge CLPS funding: Since 2019, NASA has been awarding relatively small amounts of funding to private companies to land a few hundred kilograms of cargo on the Moon. NASA could dramatically increase funding to this program, say up to $10 billion, and offer prizes for the first and second companies to land two humans on the Moon. This would open the competition to other companies beyond SpaceX and Blue Origin, such as Firefly, Intuitive Machines, and Astrobotic. The problem is that time is running short, and scaling up from 100 kilograms to 10 metric tons is an extraordinary challenge.
  • Build the Lunar Module: NASA already landed humans on the Moon in the 1960s with a Lunar Module built by Grumman. Why not just build something similar again? In fact, some traditional contractors have been telling NASA and Trump officials this is the best option, that such a solution, with enough funding and cost-plus guarantees, could be built in two or three years. The problem with this is that, sorry, the traditional space industry just isn’t up to the task. It took more than a decade to build a relatively simple rocket based on the space shuttle. The idea that a traditional contractor will complete a Lunar Module in five years or less is not supported by any evidence in the last 20 years. The flimsy Lunar Module would also likely not pass NASA’s present-day safety standards.
  • Distract China: I include this only for completeness. As for how to distract China, use your imagination. But I would submit that ULA snipers or starting a war in the South China Sea is not the best way to go about winning the space race.

OK, I read this far. What’s the answer?

The answer is Blue Origin’s Mark 1 lander.

The company has finished assembly of the first Mark 1 lander and will soon ship it from Florida to Johnson Space Center in Houston for vacuum chamber testing. A pathfinder mission is scheduled to launch in early 2026. It will be the largest vehicle to ever land on the Moon. It is not rated for humans, however. It was designed as a cargo lander.

There have been some key recent developments, though. About two weeks ago, NASA announced that a second mission of Mark 1 will carry the VIPER rover to the Moon’s surface in 2027. This means that Blue Origin intends to start a production line of Mark 1 landers.

At the same time, Blue Origin already has a contract with NASA to develop the much larger Mark 2 lander, which is intended to carry humans to the lunar surface. Realistically, though, this will not be ready until sometime in the 2030s. Like SpaceX’s Starship, it will require multiple refueling launches. As part of this contract, Blue has worked extensively with NASA on a crew cabin for the Mark 2 lander.

A full-size mock-up of the Blue Origin Mk. 1 lunar lander.

Credit: Eric Berger

A full-size mock-up of the Blue Origin Mk. 1 lunar lander. Credit: Eric Berger

Here comes the important part. Ars can now report, based on government sources, that Blue Origin has begun preliminary work on a modified version of the Mark 1 lander—leveraging learnings from Mark 2 crew development—that could be part of an architecture to land humans on the Moon this decade. NASA has not formally requested Blue Origin to work on this technology, but according to a space agency official, the company recognizes the urgency of the need.

How would it work? Blue Origin is still architecting the mission, but it would involve “multiple” Mark 1 landers to carry crew down to the lunar surface and then ascend back up to lunar orbit to rendezvous with the Orion spacecraft. Enough work has been done, according to the official, that Blue Origin engineers are confident the approach could work. Critically, it would not require any refueling.

It is unclear whether this solution has reached Duffy, but he would be smart to listen. According to sources, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos is intrigued by the idea. And why wouldn’t he be? For a quarter of a century, he has been hearing about how Musk has been kicking his ass in spaceflight. Bezos also loves the Apollo program and could now play an essential role in serving his country in an hour of need. He could beat SpaceX to the Moon and stamp his name in the history of spaceflight.

Jeff and Sean? Y’all need to talk.

Photo of Eric Berger

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

How America fell behind China in the lunar space race—and how it can catch back up Read More »

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Rocket Report: Keeping up with Kuiper; New Glenn’s second flight slips

ariane 6, artemis II, astra, blue origin, Firefly Aerospace, moon, NASA, new glenn, rocket report, Security, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship, VIPER / /

Amazon plans to conduct two launches of Kuiper broadband satellites just days apart.

An unarmed Trident II D5 Life Extension (D5LE) missile launches from an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine off the coast of Florida. Credit: US Navy

Welcome to Edition 8.12 of the Rocket Report! We often hear from satellite operators—from the military to venture-backed startups—about their appetite for more launch capacity. With so many rocket launches happening around the world, some might want to dismiss these statements as a corporate plea for more competition, and therefore lower prices. SpaceX is on pace to launch more than 150 times this year. China could end the year with more than 70 orbital launches. These are staggering numbers compared to global launch rates just a few years ago. But I’m convinced there’s room for more alternatives for reliable (and reusable) rockets. All of the world’s planned mega-constellations will need immense launch capacity just to get off the ground, and if successful, they’ll go into regular replacement and replenishment cycles. Throw in the still-undefined Golden Dome missile shield and many nations’ desire for a sovereign launch capability, and it’s easy to see the demand curve going up.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Sharp words from Astra’s Chris Kemp. Chris Kemp, the chief executive officer of Astra, apparently didn’t get the memo about playing nice with his competitors in the launch business. Kemp made some spicy remarks at the Berkeley Space Symposium 2025 earlier this month, billed as the largest undergraduate aerospace event at the university (see video of the talk). During the speech, Kemp periodically deviated from building up Astra to hurling insults at several of his competitors in the launch industry, Ars reports. To be fair to Kemp, some of his criticisms are not without a kernel of truth. But they are uncharacteristically rough all the same, especially given Astra’s uneven-at-best launch record and financial solvency to date.

Wait, what?! … Kemp is generally laudatory in his comments about SpaceX, but his most crass statement took aim at the quality of life of SpaceX employees at Starbase, Texas. He said life at Astra is “more fun than SpaceX because we’re not on the border of Mexico where they’ll chop your head off if you accidentally take a left turn.” For the record, no SpaceX employees have been beheaded. “And you don’t have to live in a trailer. And we don’t make you work six and a half days a week, 12 hours a day.” Kemp also accused Firefly Aerospace of sending Astra “garbage” rocket engines as part of the companies’ partnership on propulsion for Astra’s next-generation rocket.

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A step forward for Europe’s reusable rocket program. No one could accuse the European Space Agency and its various contractors of moving swiftly when it comes to the development of reusable rockets. However, it appears that Europe is finally making some credible progress, Ars reports. Last week, the France-based ArianeGroup aerospace company announced that it completed the integration of the Themis vehicle, a prototype rocket that will test various landing technologies, on a launch pad in Sweden. Low-altitude hop tests, a precursor for developing a rocket’s first stage that can vertically land after an orbital launch, could start late this year or early next.

Hopping into the future … “This milestone marks the beginning of the ‘combined tests,’ during which the interface between Themis and the launch pad’s mechanical, electrical, and fluid systems will be thoroughly trialed, with the aim of completing a test under cryogenic conditions,” ArianeGroup said. This particular rocket will likely undergo only short hops, initially about 100 meters. A follow-up vehicle, Themis T1E, is intended to fly medium-altitude tests at a later date. Some of the learnings from these prototypes will feed into a smaller, reusable rocket intended to lift 500 kilograms to low-Earth orbit. This is under development by MaiaSpace, a subsidiary of ArianeGroup. Eventually, the European Space Agency would like to use technology developed as part of Themis to develop a new line of reusable rockets that will succeed the Ariane 6 rocket.

Navy conducts Trident missile drills. The US Navy carried out four scheduled missile tests of a nuclear-capable weapons system off the coast of Florida within the last week, Defense News reports. The service’s Strategic Systems Programs conducted flights of unarmed Trident II D5 Life Extension missiles from a submerged Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine from September 17 to September 21 as part of an ongoing scheduled event meant to test the reliability of the system. “The missile tests were not conducted in response to any ongoing world events,” a Navy release said.

Secret with high visibility … The Navy periodically performs these Trident missile tests off the coasts of Florida and California, taking advantage of support infrastructure and range support from the two busiest US spaceports. The military doesn’t announce the exact timing of the tests, but warnings issued for pilots to stay out of the area give a general idea of when they might occur. One of the launch events Sunday was visible from Puerto Rico, illuminating the night sky in photos published on social media. The missiles fell in the Atlantic Ocean as intended, the Navy said. The Trident II D5 missiles were developed in the 1980s and are expected to remain in service on the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines into the 2040s. The Trident system is one leg of the US military’s nuclear triad, alongside land-based Minuteman ballistic missiles and nuclear-capable strategic bombers. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Firefly plans for Alpha’s return to flight. Firefly Aerospace expects to resume Alpha launches in the “coming weeks,” with two flights planned before the end of the year, Space News reports. These will be the first flights of Firefly’s one-ton-class Alpha rocket since a failure in April destroyed a Lockheed Martin tech demo satellite after liftoff from California. In a quarterly earnings call, Firefly shared a photo showing its next two Alpha rockets awaiting shipment from the company’s Texas factory.

Righting the ship … These next two launches really need to go well for Firefly. The Alpha rocket has, at best, a mixed record with only two fully successful flights in six attempts. Two other missions put their payloads into off-target orbits, and two Alpha launches failed to reach orbit at all. Firefly went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange last month, raising nearly $900 million in the initial public offering to help fund the company’s future programs, namely the medium-lift Eclipse rocket developed in partnership with Northrop Grumman. There’s a lot to like about Firefly. The company achieved the first fully successful landing of a commercial spacecraft on the Moon in March. NASA has selected Firefly for three more commercial landings on the Moon, and Firefly reported this week it has an agreement with an unnamed commercial customer for an additional dedicated mission. But the Alpha program hasn’t had the same level of success. We’ll see if Firefly can get the rocket on track soon. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Avio wins contract to launch “extra-European” mission. Italian rocket builder Avio has signed a launch services agreement with US-based launch aggregator SpaceLaunch for a Vega C launch carrying an Earth observation satellite for an “extra-European institutional customer” in 2027, European Spaceflight reports. Avio announced that it had secured the launch contract on September 18. According to the company, the contract was awarded through an open international competition, with Vega C chosen for its “versatility and cost-effectiveness.” While Avio did not reveal the identity of the “extra-European” customer, it said that it would do so later this year.

Plenty of peculiarities … There are several questions to unpack here, and Andrew Parsonson of European Spaceflight goes through them all. Presumably, extra-European means the customer is based outside of Europe. Avio’s statement suggests we’ll find out the answer to that question soon. Details about the US-based launch broker SpaceLaunch are harder to find. SpaceLaunch appears to have been founded in January 2025 by two former Firefly Aerospace employees with a combined 40 years of experience in the industry. On its website, the company claims to provide end-to-end satellite launch integration, mission management, and launch procurement services with a “portfolio of launch vehicle capacity around the globe.” SpaceLaunch boasts it has supported the launch of more than 150 satellites on 12 different launch vehicles. However, according to public records, it does not appear that the company itself has supported a single launch. Instead, the claim seems to credit SpaceLaunch with launches that were actually carried out during the two founders’ previous tenures at Spaceflight, Firefly Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, and the US Air Force. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Falcon 9 launches three missions for NASA and NOAA. Scientists loaded three missions worth nearly $1.6 billion on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for launch Wednesday, toward an orbit nearly a million miles from Earth, to measure the supersonic stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun, Ars reports. One of the missions, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will beam back real-time observations of the solar wind to provide advance warning of geomagnetic storms that could affect power grids, radio communications, GPS navigation, air travel, and satellite operations. The other two missions come from NASA, with research objectives that include studying the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space and observing the rarely seen outermost layer of our own planet’s atmosphere.

Immense value … All three spacecraft will operate in orbit around the L1 Lagrange point, a gravitational balance point located more than 900,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. Bundling these three missions onto the same rocket saved at least tens of millions of dollars in launch costs. Normally, they would have needed three different rockets. Rideshare missions to low-Earth orbit are becoming more common, but spacecraft departing for more distant destinations like the L1 Lagrange point are rare. Getting all three missions on the same launch required extensive planning, a stroke of luck, and fortuitous timing. “This is the ultimate cosmic carpool,” said Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s heliophysics division. “These three missions heading out to the Sun-Earth L1 point riding along together provide immense value for the American taxpayer.”

US officials concerned about China mastering reusable launch. SpaceX’s dominance in reusable rocketry is one of the most important advantages the United States has over China as competition between the two nations extends into space, US Space Force officials said Monday. But several Chinese companies are getting close to fielding their own reusable rockets, Ars reports. “It’s concerning how fast they’re going,” said Brig. Gen. Brian Sidari, the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for intelligence. “I’m concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker cadence than currently exists.”

By the numbers … China has used 14 different types of rockets on its 56 orbital-class missions this year, and none have flown more than 11 times. Eight US rocket types have cumulatively flown 145 times, with 122 of those using SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. Without a reusable rocket, China must maintain more rocket companies to sustain a launch rate of just one-third to one-half that of the United States. This contrasts with the situation just four years ago, when China outpaced the United States in orbital rocket launches. The growth in US launches has been a direct result of SpaceX’s improvements to launch at a higher rate, an achievement primarily driven by the recovery and reuse of Falcon 9 boosters and payload fairings.

Atlas V launches more Kuiper satellites. Roughly an hour past sunrise on Thursday, an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance took flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Onboard the rocket, flying in its most powerful configuration, were the next 27 Project Kuiper broadband satellites from Amazon, Spaceflight Now reports. This is the third batch of production satellites launched by ULA and the fifth overall for the growing low-Earth orbit constellation. The Atlas V rocket released the 27 Kuiper satellites about 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth. The satellites will use onboard propulsion to boost themselves to their assigned orbit at 392 miles (630 kilometers).

Another Kuiper launch on tap … With this deployment, Amazon now has 129 satellites in orbit. This is a small fraction of the network’s planned total of 3,232 satellites, but Amazon has enjoyed a steep ramp-up in the Kuiper launch cadence as the company’s satellite assembly line in Kirkland, Washington, continues churning out spacecraft. Another 24 Kuiper satellites are slated to launch September 30 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and Amazon has delivered enough satellites to Florida for an additional launch later this fall. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

German military will fly with Ariane 6. Airbus Defense and Space has awarded Arianespace a contract to launch a pair of SATCOMBw-3 communications satellites for the German Armed Forces, European Spaceflight reports. Airbus is the prime contractor for the nearly $2.5 billion (2.1 billion euro) SATCOMBw-3 program, which will take over from the two-satellite SATCOMBw-2 constellation currently providing secure communications for the German military. Arianespace announced Wednesday that it had been awarded the contract to launch the satellites aboard two Ariane 6 rockets. “By signing this new strategic contract for the German Armed Forces, Arianespace accomplishes its core mission of guaranteeing autonomous access to space for European sovereign satellites,” said Arianespace CEO David Cavaillolès.

Running home to Europe … The chief goal of the Ariane 6 program is to provide Europe with independent access to space, something many European governments see as a strategic requirement. Several European military, national security, and scientific satellites have launched on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets in the last few years as officials waited for the debut of the Ariane 6 rocket. With three successful Ariane 6 flights now in the books, European customers seem to now have the confidence to commit to flying their satellites on Ariane 6. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Artemis II launch targeted for February. NASA is pressing ahead with preparations for the first launch of humans beyond low-Earth orbit in more than five decades, and officials said Tuesday that the Artemis II mission could take flight early next year, Ars reports. Although work remains to be done, the space agency is now pushing toward a launch window that opens on February 5, 2026, officials said during a news conference on Tuesday at Johnson Space Center. The Artemis II mission represents a major step forward for NASA and seeks to send four astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—around the Moon and back. The 10-day mission will be the first time astronauts have left low-Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

Orion named Integrity … The first astronauts set to fly to the Moon in more than 50 years will do so in Integrity, Ars reports. NASA’s Artemis II crew revealed Integrity as the name of their Orion spacecraft during a news conference on Wednesday at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We thought, as a crew, we need to name this spacecraft. We need to have a name for the Orion spacecraft that we’re going to ride this magical mission on,” said Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II mission.

FAA reveals new Starship trajectories. Sometime soon, perhaps next year, SpaceX will attempt to fly one of its enormous Starship rockets from low-Earth orbit back to its launch pad in South Texas. A successful return and catch at the launch tower would demonstrate a key capability underpinning Elon Musk’s hopes for a fully reusable rocket. For this to happen, SpaceX must overcome the tyranny of geography. A new document released by the Federal Aviation Administration shows the narrow corridors Starship will fly to space and back when SpaceX tries to recover them, Ars reports.

Flying over people … It was always evident that flying a Starship from low-Earth orbit back to Starbase would require the rocket to fly over Mexico and portions of South Texas. The rocket launches to the east over the Gulf of Mexico, so it must approach Starbase from the west when it comes in for a landing. The new maps show SpaceX will launch Starships to the southeast over the Gulf and the Caribbean Sea, and directly over Jamaica, or to the northeast over the Gulf and the Florida peninsula. On reentry, the ship will fly over Baja California and Mexico’s interior near the cities of Hermosillo and Chihuahua, each with a population of roughly a million people. The trajectory would bring Starship well north of the Monterrey metro area and its 5.3 million residents, then over the Rio Grande Valley near the Texas cities of McAllen and Brownsville.

New Glenn’s second flight at least a month away. The second launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, carrying a NASA smallsat mission to Mars, is now expected in late October or early November, Space News reports. Tim Dunn, NASA’s senior launch director at Kennedy Space Center, provided an updated schedule for the second flight of New Glenn in comments after a NASA-sponsored launch on a Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday. Previously, the official schedule from NASA showed the launch date as no earlier than September 29.

No surprise … It was already apparent that this launch wouldn’t happen on September 29. Blue Origin has test-fired the second stage for the upcoming flight of the New Glenn rocket but hasn’t rolled the first stage to the launch pad for its static fire. Seeing the rocket emerge from Blue’s factory in Florida will be an indication that the launch date is finally near. Blue Origin will launch NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, a pair of small satellites to study how the solar wind interacts with the Martian upper atmosphere.

Blue Origin will launch a NASA rover to the Moon. NASA has awarded Blue Origin a task order worth up to $190 million to deliver its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Moon’s surface, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Blue Origin, one of 13 currently active Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) providers, submitted the only bid to carry VIPER to the Moon after NASA requested offers from industry last month. NASA canceled the VIPER mission last year, citing cost overruns with the rover and delays in its planned ride to the Moon aboard a lander provided by Astrobotic. But engineers had already completed assembly of the rover, and scientists protested NASA’s decision to terminate the mission.

Some caveats … Blue Origin will deliver VIPER to a location near the Moon’s south pole in late 2027 using a robotic Blue Moon MK1 lander, a massive craft larger than the Apollo lunar landing module. The company’s first Blue Moon MK1 lander is scheduled to fly to the Moon next year. NASA’s contract for the VIPER delivery calls for Blue Origin to design accommodations for the rover on the Blue Moon lander. The agency said it will decide whether to proceed with the actual launch on a New Glenn rocket and delivery of VIPER to the Moon based partially on the outcome of the first Blue Moon test flight next year.

Next three launches

Sept. 26: Long March 4C | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 19: 20 UTC

Sept. 27: Long March 6A | Unknown Payload | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 12: 39 UTC

Sept. 28: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-20 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 23: 32 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Rocket Report: Keeping up with Kuiper; New Glenn’s second flight slips Read More »

sierra’s-dream-chaser-is-starting-to-resemble-a-nightmare

Sierra’s Dream Chaser is starting to resemble a nightmare

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However, in its news release, NASA said it is no longer obligated to a specific number of resupply missions.

Chasing those defense dollars

In its own statement on the announcement, Sierra Space said the new approach will provide it with more “flexibility” as the company seeks to attract national defense contracts.

“Dream Chaser represents the future of versatile space transportation and mission flexibility,” said Fatih Ozmen, executive chair at Sierra Space, in the statement. “This transition provides unique capabilities to meet the needs of diverse mission profiles, including emerging and existential threats and national security priorities that align with our acceleration into the Defense Tech market.”

Although the NASA news release does not detail the space agency’s concerns about allowing Dream Chaser to approach the station, sources have told Ars the space agency has yet to certify the spacecraft’s propulsion system. The spacecraft is powered by more than two dozen small rocket engines, each capable of operating at three discrete levels of thrust for fine control or more significant orbit adjustments. Certification is a necessary precursor for allowing a vehicle to approach the orbiting laboratory.

Sierra said it is now targeting a “late 2026” debut for Dream Chaser, but that date is far enough in the future that it is likely subject to Berger’s Law, and probably means no earlier than 2027. This all but precludes a cargo mission to the International Space Station, which is scheduled to be deorbited in 2030, and presently has two more-than-capable supply vehicles with SpaceX’s Dragon and Northrop’s new, larger Cygnus.

It is possible that Dream Chaser could serve a future market of commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit, but to do so, Sierra will have to get the vehicle flying reliably, frequently, and at a relatively low cost to compete with Dragon and Cygnus. Those are big hurdles for a spacecraft that is now many years behind schedule and no longer has any guaranteed government missions.

Sierra’s Dream Chaser is starting to resemble a nightmare Read More »

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A “cosmic carpool” is traveling to a distant space weather observation post

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“It’s like a bus. You wait for one and then three come at the same time.”

NASA’s IMAP spacecraft (top), the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (left), and NOAA’s first operational space weather satellite (right) shared a ride to space on a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday. Credit: SpaceX

Scientists loaded three missions worth nearly $1.6 billion on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for launch Wednesday, toward an orbit nearly a million miles from Earth, to measure the supersonic stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun.

One of the missions, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will beam back real-time observations of the solar wind to provide advance warning of geomagnetic storms that could affect power grids, radio communications, GPS navigation, air travel, and satellite operations.

The other two missions come from NASA, with research objectives that include studying the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space and observing the rarely seen outermost layer of our own planet’s atmosphere.

All three spacecraft were mounted to the top of a Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff at 7: 30 am EDT (11: 30 UTC) on Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket arced on a trajectory heading east from Florida’s Space Coast, shed its reusable first stage booster for a landing offshore, then fired its upper stage engine twice to propel the trio of missions into deep space.

A few minutes later, each of the spacecraft separated from the Falcon 9 to begin a multi-month journey toward their observing locations in halo orbits around the L1 Lagrange point, a gravitational balance point roughly 900,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth toward the Sun. The combined pull from the Earth and Sun at this location provides a stable region for satellites to operate in, and a good location for instruments designed for solar science.

Liftoff of IMAP and its two co-passengers on a Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: SpaceX

Seeing the big picture

The primary mission launched on Wednesday is called the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP). The spin-stabilized IMAP spacecraft is shaped like a donut, with a diameter of about 8 feet (2.4 meters) and 10 science instruments looking inward toward the Sun and outward toward the edge of the heliosphere, the teardrop-shaped magnetic bubble blown outward by the solar wind.

At the edge of the heliosphere, the solar wind runs up against the interstellar medium, the gas, dust, and radiation in the space between the stars. This boundary remains a poorly understood frontier in space science, but it’s important because the heliosphere protects the Solar System from damaging galactic cosmic rays.

“IMAP is a mission of firsts,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate. “It’ll be the first spacecraft dedicated to mapping the heliosphere’s outer boundary, a key piece in the heliophysics puzzle about the Sun’s influence on our Solar System. To do this, IMAP will spin every 15 seconds to measure the invisible using a very comprehensive suite of revolutionary instruments.”

During each rotation, IMAP’s sensors will scoop up all sorts of stuff: ions traveling 1 million miles per hour in the solar wind, interstellar dust particles, and energetic neutral atoms kicked back into the Solar System from the edge of the heliosphere.

“These energetic neutral atoms act as cosmic messengers,” said David McComas, IMAP’s principal investigator from Princeton University. “They’re unaffected by magnetic fields so they can propagate all the way in from the boundaries to Earth’s orbit and be measured by IMAP.”

Tracking these energetic neutral atoms will allow scientists to map the boundary of the heliosphere and what shapes it. The Sun’s movement through the Milky Way galaxy forms a shock wave on the front side of the heliosphere, similar to the wave created by the bow of a ship moving through water.

Artist’s illustration of the IMAP spacecraft in orbit. Credit: NASA

“We ended up with this fabulous observatory that measures everything,” McComas said. “The particles coming out from the Sun are moving out in the solar wind to get to the outer heliosphere. Some fraction of them become neutralized and come right back, and we observe them a few years later as ENAs (energetic neutral atoms). So, we’re really observing the entire life cycle of this particle energization and how it interacts at the boundaries of the heliosphere.”

IMAP follows a much smaller mission, named IBEX, that carried just two instruments to begin probing the edge of the heliosphere in 2008. IBEX discovered an unexpected ribbon-like pattern of energetic neutral emissions coming from the front of the heliosphere. Scientists have developed several theories to explain the ribbon signature. One of the theories postulates that the ribbon represents a group of particles that somehow leaked from the heliosphere and bounced around interstellar space before returning to the Solar System.

“It was found that interstellar matter, particles, and neutrals streaming in from outside the Solar System, actually… have a significant effect in how the entire heliosphere behaves,” said Shri Kanekal, IMAP’s mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

IBEX’s discoveries fueled enthusiasm among space scientists for a more sophisticated follow-up mission like IMAP. NASA selected IMAP for development in 2018, and the $782 million mission will spend at least two years conducting scientific observations. The spacecraft was built at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

The ribbon remains one of IBEX’s biggest discoveries. It refers to a vast, diagonal swath of energetic neutrals, painted across the front of the heliosphere. Credit: NASA/IBEX

“Immense value”

Two years after NASA approved IMAP for development, the agency’s heliophysics division selected another mission to head for the L1 Lagrange point. This smaller spacecraft, called the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, hitched a ride to space with IMAP on Wednesday.

The $97 million Carruthers mission carries two co-aligned ultraviolet imagers designed for simultaneous observations of Earth’s exosphere, a tenuous cloud of hydrogen gas that fades into the airless void of outer space about halfway to the Moon. The hydrogen atoms in the exosphere generate a faint glow called the geocorona, which is only detectable in ultraviolet light at great distances. Images of the entire geocorona can’t be collected from a satellite in Earth orbit.

The mission is named for George Carruthers, an engineer and solar physicist who developed an ultraviolet camera placed on the Moon by the Apollo 16 astronauts in 1972. This camera captured the first view of the geocorona, a term coined by Carruthers himself.

The 531-pound (241-kilogram) Carruthers observatory was built by BAE Systems, with instruments provided by the University of California Berkeley’s Space Sciences Lab.

There’s a lot for scientists to learn from the Carruthers mission, because they know little about the exosphere or geocorona.

“We actually don’t know exactly how big it is,” said Lara Waldrop, the mission’s principal investigator from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “We don’t know whether it’s spherical or oval, how much it changes over time or even the density of its constituent hydrogen atoms.”

What scientists do know is that the exosphere plays an important role in shaping how solar storms affect the Earth. The exosphere is also the path by which the Earth is (very) slowly losing atomic hydrogen from water vapor lofted high into the atmosphere. “This process is extremely slow at Earth, and I’m talking billions of years. It is certainly nothing to worry about,” Waldrop ensures.

This image illustrates the location of the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point, where IMAP, Carruthers, and SWFO-L1 will operate. Credit: NOAA

The final spacecraft aboard Wednesday’s launch is the world’s first operational satellite dedicated to monitoring space weather. This $692 million mission is called the Space Weather Follow On-L1, or SWFO-L1, and serves as an “early warning beacon” for the potentially devastating effects of geomagnetic storms, said Irene Parker, deputy assistant administrator for systems at NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service.

NOAA’s previous satellites peer down at Earth from low-Earth orbit or geosynchronous orbit, gathering data for numerical weather models and tracking the real-time movement of hurricanes and severe storms. Until now, NOAA has relied upon a hodgepodge of research satellites to monitor the solar wind upstream from Earth. SWFO-L1, also built by BAE Systems, is the first mission designed from the start for real-time, around-the-clock solar wind observations.

“We’ll use SWFO-L1 to buy power grid, airline, and satellite operators precious time to act before billion-dollar storms strike,” said Clinton Wallace, director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

Once on station around the L1 Lagrange point, the satellite will be renamed SOLAR-1 before NOAA declares it operational in mid-2026. The platform hosts four instruments, one of which is a coronagraph to detect the massive eruptions from the Sun that spark geomagnetic storms. The other instruments will sample solar particles as they pass over the spacecraft about a half-hour before they reach our planet.

These instruments are akin to weather satellites that detect a hurricane’s formation over the remote ocean and hurricane hunters that take direct measurements of the storm to assess its intensity before landfall, NOAA said.

Bundling IMAP, Carruthers, and SWFO-L1 onto the same rocket saved at least tens of millions of dollars in launch costs. Normally, they would have needed three different rockets.

Rideshare missions to low-Earth orbit are becoming more common, but spacecraft departing for more distant destinations like the L1 Lagrange point are rare. Getting all three missions on the same launch required extensive planning, a stroke of luck, and fortuitous timing.

“This is the ultimate cosmic carpool,” said Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s heliophysics division. “These three missions heading out to the Sun-Earth L1 point riding along together provide immense value for the American taxpayer.”

“It’s like a bus,” Fox said. “You wait for one and then three come at the same time.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

A “cosmic carpool” is traveling to a distant space weather observation post Read More »

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NASA targeting early February for Artemis II mission to the Moon

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NASA is pressing ahead with preparations for the first launch of humans beyond low-Earth orbit in more than five decades, and officials said Tuesday that the Artemis II mission could take flight early next year.

Although work remains to be done, the space agency is now pushing toward a launch window that opens on February 5, 2026, officials said during a news conference on Tuesday at Johnson Space Center.

The Artemis II mission represents a major step forward for NASA and seeks to send four astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—around the Moon and back. The 10-day mission will be the first time astronauts have left low-Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

Hardware nearing readiness

The mission’s Space Launch System rocket has been stacked and declared ready for flight. The Orion spacecraft is in the final stages of preparation and will be attached to the top of the rocket later this year.

Early next year, the combined stack will roll out to the vehicle’s launch site at Kennedy Space Center, said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director. At the pad, the rocket and spacecraft will be connected to ground systems, and after about two weeks, it will undergo a “wet dress rehearsal.”

During this fueling test, the first and second stages of the rocket will be fully loaded with liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and the countdown will be taken down to T-29 seconds. After this test, the rocket will be de-tanked and turned around for launch.

Due to the orbits of Earth and the Moon and various constraints on the mission, there are launch windows each month that last four to eight days. In February, that window opens on the fifth, and it would be an evening launch, Blackwell-Thompson said.

After launching, the Orion spacecraft will separate from the upper stage of the SLS rocket a little more than three hours after liftoff. It will spend about 24 hours in orbit around Earth, during which time the four astronauts on board will perform various checkouts to ensure the vehicle’s life support systems, thrusters, and other equipment are performing nominally.

NASA targeting early February for Artemis II mission to the Moon Read More »

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Starship will soon fly over towns and cities, but will dodge the biggest ones

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Starship’s next chapter will involve launching over Florida and returning over Mexico.

SpaceX’s Starship vehicle is encased in plasma as it reenters the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean on its most recent test flight in August. Credit: SpaceX

Some time soon, perhaps next year, SpaceX will attempt to fly one of its enormous Starship rockets from low-Earth orbit back to its launch pad in South Texas. A successful return and catch at the launch tower would demonstrate a key capability underpinning Elon Musk’s hopes for a fully reusable rocket.

In order for this to happen, SpaceX must overcome the tyranny of geography. Unlike launches over the open ocean from Cape Canaveral, Florida, rockets departing from South Texas must follow a narrow corridor to steer clear of downrange land masses.

All 10 of the rocket’s test flights so far have launched from Texas toward splashdowns in the Indian or Pacific Oceans. On these trajectories, the rocket never completes a full orbit around the Earth, but instead flies an arcing path through space before gravity pulls it back into the atmosphere.

If Starship’s next two test flights go well, SpaceX will likely attempt to send the soon-to-debut third-generation version of the rocket all the way to low-Earth orbit. The Starship V3 vehicle will measure 171 feet (52.1 meters) tall, a few feet more than Starship’s current configuration. The entire rocket, including its Super Heavy booster, will have a height of 408 feet (124.4 meters).

Starship, made of stainless steel, is designed for full reusability. SpaceX has already recovered and reflown Super Heavy boosters, but won’t be ready to recover the rocket’s Starship upper stage until next year, at the soonest.

That’s one of the next major milestones in Starship’s development after achieving orbital flight. SpaceX will attempt to bring the ship home to be caught back at the launch site by the launch tower at Starbase, Texas, located on the southernmost section of the Texas Gulf Coast near the US-Mexico border.

It was always evident that flying a Starship from low-Earth orbit back to Starbase would require the rocket to fly over Mexico and portions of South Texas. The rocket launches to the east over the Gulf of Mexico, so it must approach Starbase from the west when it comes in for a landing.

New maps published by the Federal Aviation Administration show where the first Starships returning to Texas may fly when they streak through the atmosphere.

Paths to and from orbit

The FAA released a document Friday describing SpaceX’s request to update its government license for additional Starship launch and reentry trajectories. The document is a draft version of a “tiered environmental assessment” examining the potential for significant environmental impacts from the new launch and reentry flight paths.

The federal regulator said it is evaluating potential impacts in aviation emissions and air quality, noise and noise-compatible land use, hazardous materials, and socioeconomics. The FAA concluded the new flight paths proposed by SpaceX would have “no significant impacts” in any of these categories.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket shortly before splashing into the Indian Ocean in August. Credit: SpaceX

The environmental review is just one of several factors the FAA considers when deciding whether to approve a new commercial launch or reentry license. According to the FAA, the other factors are public safety issues (such as overflight of populated areas and payload contents), national security or foreign policy concerns, and insurance requirements.

The FAA didn’t make a statement on any public safety and foreign policy concerns with SpaceX’s new trajectories, but both issues may come into play as the company seeks approval to fly Starship over Mexican towns and cities uprange from Starbase.

The regulator’s licensing rules state that a commercial launch and reentry should each pose no greater than a 1 in 10,000 chance of harming or killing a member of the public not involved in the mission. The risk to any individual should not exceed 1 in 1 million.

So, what’s the danger? If something on Starship fails, it could disintegrate in the atmosphere. Surviving debris would rain down to the ground, as it did over the Turks and Caicos Islands after two Starship launch failures earlier this year. Two other Starship flights ran into problems once in space, tumbling out of control and breaking apart during reentry over the Indian Ocean.

The most recent Starship flight last month was more successful, with the ship reaching its target in the Indian Ocean for a pinpoint splashdown. The splashdown had an error of just 3 meters (10 feet), giving SpaceX confidence in returning future Starships to land.

This map shows Starship’s proposed reentry corridor. Credit: Federal Aviation Administration

One way of minimizing the risk to the public is to avoid flying over large metropolitan areas, and that’s exactly what SpaceX and the FAA are proposing to do, at least for the initial attempts to bring Starship home from orbit. A map of a “notional” Starship reentry flight path shows the vehicle beginning its reentry over the Pacific Ocean, then passing over Baja California and soaring above Mexico’s interior near the cities of Hermosillo and Chihuahua, each with a population of roughly a million people.

The trajectory would bring Starship well north of the Monterrey metro area and its 5.3 million residents, then over the Rio Grande Valley near the Texas cities of McAllen and Brownsville. During the final segment of Starship’s return trajectory, the vehicle will begin a vertical descent over Starbase before a final landing burn to slow it down for the launch pad’s arms to catch it in midair.

In addition to Monterrey, the proposed flight path dodges overflights of major US cities like San Diego, Phoenix, and El Paso, Texas.

Let’s back up

Setting up for this reentry trajectory requires SpaceX to launch Starship into an orbit with exactly the right inclination, or angle to the equator. There are safety constraints for SpaceX and the FAA to consider here, too.

All of the Starship test flights to date have launched toward the east, threading between South Florida and Cuba, south of the Bahamas, and north of Puerto Rico before heading over the North Atlantic Ocean. For Starship to target just the right orbit to set up for reentry, the rocket must fly in a slightly different direction over the Gulf.

Another map released by the FAA shows two possible paths Starship could take. One of the options goes to the southeast between Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and the western tip of Cuba, then directly over Jamaica as the rocket accelerated into orbit over the Caribbean Sea. The other would see Starship departing South Texas on a northeasterly path and crossing over North Florida before reaching the Atlantic Ocean.

While both trajectories fly over land, they avoid the largest cities situated near the flight path. For example, the southerly route misses Cancun, Mexico, and the northerly path flies between Jacksonville and Orlando, Florida. “Orbital launches would primarily be to low inclinations with flight trajectories north or south of Cuba that minimize land overflight,” the FAA wrote in its draft environmental assessment.

The FAA analyzed two launch trajectory options for future orbital Starship test flights. Credit: Federal Aviation Administration

The proposed launch and reentry trajectories would result in temporary airspace closures, the FAA said. This could force delays or rerouting of anywhere from seven to 400 commercial flights for each launch, according to the FAA’s assessment.

Launch airspace closures are already the norm for Starship test flights. The FAA concluded that the reentry path over Mexico would require the closure of a swath of airspace covering more than 4,200 miles. This would affect up to 200 more commercial airplane flights during each Starship mission. Eventually, the FAA aims to shrink the airspace closures as SpaceX demonstrates improved reliability with Starship test flights.

Eventually, SpaceX will move some flights of Starship to Florida’s Space Coast, where rockets can safely launch in many directions over the Atlantic. By then, SpaceX aims to be launching Starships at a regular cadence—first, multiple flights per month, then per week, and then per day.

This will enable all of the things SpaceX wants to do with Starship. Chief among these goals is to fly Starships to Mars. Before then, SpaceX must master orbital refueling. NASA also has a contract with SpaceX to build Starships to land astronauts on the Moon’s south pole.

But all of that assumes SpaceX can routinely launch and recover Starships. That’s what engineers hope to soon prove they can do.

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Starship will soon fly over towns and cities, but will dodge the biggest ones Read More »

in-a-win-for-science,-nasa-told-to-use-house-budget-as-shutdown-looms

In a win for science, NASA told to use House budget as shutdown looms

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The situation with the fiscal year 2026 budget for the United States is, to put it politely, kind of a mess.

The White House proposed a budget earlier this year with significant cuts for a number of agencies, including NASA. In the months since then, through the appropriations process, both the House and Senate have proposed their own budget templates. However, Congress has not passed a final budget, and the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

As a result of political wrangling over whether to pass a “continuing resolution” to fund the government before a final budget is passed, a government shutdown appears to be increasingly likely.

Science saved, sort of

In the event of a shutdown, there has been much uncertainty about what would happen to NASA’s budget and the agency’s science missions. Earlier this summer, for example, the White House directed science mission leaders to prepare “closeout plans” for about two dozen spacecraft.

These science missions were targeted for cancellation under the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2026, and the development of these closeout plans indicated that, in the absence of a final budget from Congress, the White House could seek to end these (and other) programs beginning October 1.

However, two sources confirmed to Ars on Friday afternoon that interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy has now directed the agency to work toward the budget level established in the House Appropriations Committee’s budget bill for the coming fiscal year. This does not support full funding for NASA’s science portfolio, but it is far more beneficial than the cuts sought by the White House.

In a win for science, NASA told to use House budget as shutdown looms Read More »

northrop-grumman’s-new-spacecraft-is-a-real-chonker

Northrop Grumman’s new spacecraft is a real chonker

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What happens when you use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to launch Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus supply ship? A record-setting resupply mission to the International Space Station.

The first flight of Northrop’s upgraded Cygnus spacecraft, called Cygnus XL, is on its way to the international research lab after launching Sunday evening from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This mission, known as NG-23, is set to arrive at the ISS early Wednesday with 10,827 pounds (4,911 kilograms) of cargo to sustain the lab and its seven-person crew.

By a sizable margin, this is the heaviest cargo load transported to the ISS by a commercial resupply mission. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will use the space station’s Canadian-built robotic arm to capture the cargo ship on Wednesday, then place it on an attachment port for crew members to open hatches and start unpacking the goodies inside.

A bigger keg

The Cygnus XL spacecraft looks a lot like Northrop’s previous missions to the station. It has a service module manufactured at the company’s factory in Northern Virginia. This segment of the spacecraft provides power, propulsion, and other necessities to keep Cygnus operating in orbit.

The most prominent features of the Cygnus cargo freighter are its circular, fan-like solar arrays and an aluminum cylinder called the pressurized cargo module that bears some resemblance to a keg of beer. This is the element that distinguishes the Cygnus XL from earlier versions of the Cygnus supply ship.

The cargo module is 5.2 feet (1.6 meters) longer on the Cygnus XL. The full spacecraft is roughly the size of two Apollo command modules, according to Ryan Tintner, vice president of civil space systems at Northrop Grumman. Put another way, the volume of the cargo section is equivalent to two-and-a-half minivans.

“The most notable thing on this mission is we are debuting the Cygnus XL configuration of the spacecraft,” Tintner said. “It’s got 33 percent more capacity than the prior Cygnus spacecraft had. Obviously, more may sound like better, but it’s really critical because we can deliver significantly more science, as well as we’re able to deliver a lot more cargo per launch, really trying to drive down the cost per kilogram to NASA.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ascends to orbit Sunday after launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, carrying Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft toward the International Space Station. Credit: Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Cargo modules for Northrop’s Cygnus spacecraft are built by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, employing a similar design to the one Thales used for several of the space station’s permanent modules. Officials moved forward with the first Cygnus XL mission after the preceding cargo module was damaged during shipment from Italy to the United States earlier this year.

Northrop Grumman’s new spacecraft is a real chonker Read More »

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NASA closing its original repository for Columbia artifacts to tours

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NASA is changing the way that its employees come in contact with, and remember, one of its worst tragedies.

In the wake of the 2003 loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its STS-107 crew, NASA created a program to use the orbiter’s debris for research and education at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Agency employees were invited to see what remained of the space shuttle as a powerful reminder as to why they had to be diligent in their work. Access to the Columbia Research and Preservation Office, though, was limited as a result of its location and related logistics.

To address that and open up the experience to more of the workforce at Kennedy, the agency has quietly begun work to establish a new facility.

“The room, titled Columbia Learning Center (CLC), is a whole new concept,” a NASA spokesperson wrote in an email. “There are no access requirements; anyone at NASA Kennedy can go in any day of the week and stay as long as they like. The CLC will be available whenever employees need the inspiration and message for generations to come.”

Debris depository

On February 1, 2003, Columbia was making its way back from a 16-day science mission in Earth orbit when the damage that it suffered during its launch resulted in the orbiter breaking apart over East Texas. Instead of landing at Kennedy as planned, Columbia fell to the ground in more than 85,000 pieces.

The tragedy claimed the lives of commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, mission specialists David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, and Laurel Clark, and payload specialist Ilan Ramon of Israel.

NASA closing its original repository for Columbia artifacts to tours Read More »

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Scientists: It’s do or die time for America’s primacy exploring the Solar System

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“When you turn off those spacecraft’s radio receivers, there’s no way to turn them back on.”

A life-size replica of the New Horizons spacecraft on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Federal funding is about to run out for 19 active space missions studying Earth’s climate, exploring the Solar System, and probing mysteries of the Universe.

This year’s budget expires at the end of this month, and Congress must act before October 1 to avert a government shutdown. If Congress passes a budget before then, it will most likely be in the form of a continuing resolution, an extension of this year’s funding levels into the first few weeks or months of fiscal year 2026.

The White House’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 calls for a 25 percent cut to NASA’s overall budget, and a nearly 50 percent reduction in funding for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. These cuts would cut off money for at least 41 missions, including 19 already in space and many more far along in development.

Normally, a president’s budget request isn’t the final say on matters. Lawmakers in the House and Senate have written their own budget bills in the last several months. There are differences between each appropriations bill, but they broadly reject most of the Trump administration’s proposed cuts.

Still, this hasn’t quelled the anxieties of anyone with a professional or layman’s interest in space science. The 19 active robotic missions chosen for cancellation are operating beyond their original design lifetime. However, in many cases, they are in pursuit of scientific data that no other mission has a chance of collecting for decades or longer.

A “tragic capitulation”

Some of the mission names are recognizable to anyone with a passing interest in NASA’s work. They include the agency’s two Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions monitoring data signatures related to climate change, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which survived a budget scare last year, and two of NASA’s three active satellites orbiting Mars.

And there’s New Horizons, a spacecraft that made front-page headlines in 2015 when it beamed home the first up-close pictures of Pluto. Another mission on the chopping block is Juno, the world’s only spacecraft currently at Jupiter.

Both spacecraft have more to offer, according to the scientists leading the missions.

“New Horizons is perfectly healthy,” said Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute (SWRI). “Everything on the spacecraft is working. All the spacecraft subsystems are performing perfectly, as close to perfectly as one could ever hope. And all the instruments are, too. The spacecraft has the fuel and power to run into the late 2040s or maybe 2050.”

New Horizons is a decade and more than 2.5 billion miles (4.1 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto. The probe flew by a frozen object named Arrokoth on New Year’s Day 2019, returning images of the most distant world ever explored by a spacecraft. Since then, the mission has continued its speedy departure from the Solar System and could become the third spacecraft to return data from interstellar space.

Alan Stern, leader of NASA’s New Horizons mission, speaks during the Tencent WE Summit at Beijing Exhibition Theater on November 6, 2016, in China. Credit: Visual China Group via Getty Images

New Horizons cost taxpayers $780 million from the start of development through the end of its primary mission after exploring Pluto. The project received $9.7 million from NASA to cover operations costs in 2024, the most recent year with full budget data.

It’s unlikely New Horizons will be able to make another close flyby of an object like it did with Pluto and Arrokoth. But the science results keep rolling in. Just last year, scientists announced the news that New Horizons found the Kuiper Belt—a vast outer zone of hundreds of thousands of small, icy worlds beyond the orbit of Neptune—might extend much farther out than previously thought.

“We’re waiting for government, in the form of Congress, the administration, to come up with a funding bill for FY26, which will tell us if our mission is on the chopping block or not,” Stern said. “The administration’s proposal is to cancel essentially every extended mission … So, we’re not being singled out, but we would get caught in that.”

Stern, who served as head of NASA’s science division in 2007 and 2008, said the surest way to prevent the White House’s cuts is for Congress to pass a budget with specific instructions for the Trump administration.

“The administration ultimately will make some decision based on what Congress does,” Stern said. “If Congress passes a continuing resolution, then that opens a whole lot of other possibilities where the administration could do something without express direction from Congress. We’re just going to have to see where we end up at the end of September and then in the fall.”

Stern said shutting down so many of NASA’s science missions would be a “tragic capitulation of US leadership” and “fiscally irresponsible.”

“We’re pretty undeniably the frontrunner, and have been for decades, in space sciences,” Stern said. “There’s much more money in overruns than there is in what it costs to run these missions—I mean, dramatically. And yet, by cutting overruns, you don’t affect our leadership position. Turning off spacecraft would put us in third or fourth place, depending on who you talk to, behind the Chinese and the Europeans at least, and maybe behind others.”

Stern resigned his job as NASA’s science chief in 2008 after taking a similar stance arguing against cuts to healthy projects and research grants to cover overruns in other programs, according to a report in Science Magazine.

An unforeseen contribution from Juno

Juno, meanwhile, has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, collecting information on the giant planet’s internal structure, magnetic field, and atmosphere.

“Everything is functional,” said Scott Bolton, the lead scientist on Juno, also from SWRI. “There’s been some degradation, things that we saw many years ago, but those haven’t changed. Actually, some of them improved, to be honest.”

The only caveat with Juno is some radiation damage to its camera, called JunoCam. Juno orbits Jupiter once every 33 days, and the trajectory brings the spacecraft through intense radiation belts trapped by the planet’s powerful magnetic field. Juno’s primary mission ended in 2021, and it’s now operating in an extended mission approved through the end of this month. The additional time exposed to harsh radiation is, not surprisingly, corrupting JunoCam’s images.

NASA’s Juno mission observed the glow from a bolt of lightning in this view from December 30, 2020, of a vortex near Jupiter’s north pole. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed the image from raw data from the JunoCam instrument aboard the spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Kevin M. Gill © CC BY

In an interview with Ars, Bolton suggested the radiation issue creates another opportunity for NASA to learn from the Juno mission. Ground teams are attempting to repair the JunoCam imager through annealing, a self-healing process that involves heating the instrument’s electronics and then allowing them to cool. Engineers sparingly tried annealing hardware space, so Juno’s experience could be instructive for future missions.

“Even satellites at Earth experience this [radiation damage], but there’s very little done or known about it,” Bolton said. “In fact, what we’re learning with Juno has benefits for Earth satellites, both commercial and national security.”

Juno’s passages through Jupiter’s harsh radiation belts provide a real-world laboratory to experiment with annealing in space. “We can’t really produce the natural radiation environment at Earth or Jupiter in a lab,” Bolton said.

Lessons learned from Juno could soon be applied to NASA’s next probe traveling to Jupiter. Europa Clipper launched last year and is on course to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030, when it will begin regular low-altitude flybys of the planet’s icy moon Europa. Before Clipper’s launch, engineers discovered a flaw that could make the spacecraft’s transistors more susceptible to radiation damage. NASA managers decided to proceed with the mission because they determined the damage could be repaired at Jupiter with annealing.

“So, we have rationale to hopefully continue Juno because of science, national security, and it sort of fits in the goals of exploration as well, because you have high radiation even in these translunar orbits [heading to the Moon],” Bolton said. “Learning about how to deal with that and how to build spacecraft better to survive that, and how to repair them, is really an interesting twist that we came by on accident, but nevertheless, turns out to be really important.”

It cost $28.4 million to operate Juno in 2024, compared to NASA’s $1.13 billion investment to build, launch, and fly the spacecraft to Jupiter.

On May 19, 2010, technicians oversee the installation of the large radiation vault onto NASA’s Juno spacecraft propulsion module. This protects the spacecraft’s vital flight and science computers from the harsh radiation at Jupiter. Credit: Lockheed Martin

“We’re hoping everything’s going to keep going,” Bolton said. “We put in a proposal for three years. The science is potentially very good. … But it’s sort of unknown. We just are waiting to hear and waiting for direction from NASA, and we’re watching all of the budget scenarios, just like everybody else, in the news.”

NASA headquarters earlier this year asked Stern and Bolton, along with teams leading other science missions coming under the ax, for an outline of what it would take and what it would cost to “close out” their projects. “We sent something that was that was a sketch of what it might look like,” Bolton said.

A “closeout” would be irreversible for at least some of the 19 missions at risk of termination.

“Termination doesn’t just mean shutting down the contract and sending everybody away, but it’s also turning the spacecraft off,” Stern said. “And when you turn off those spacecraft’s radio receivers, there’s no way to turn them back on because they’re off. They can never get a command in.

“So, if we change our mind, we’ve had another election, or had some congressional action, anything like that, it’s really terminating the spacecraft, and there’s no going back.”

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Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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